San Antonio’s mayor faced harsh criticism after she gave a biblical perspective on the reasons for poverty during a forum earlier in April.
A woman asked Mayor Ivy Taylor what she believes are the “deepest systemic causes of generational poverty” at a mayoral candidates’ forum, the Huffington Post reported Monday. Taylor, a Baptist Democrat, linked underlying causes of generational poverty to “broken people” who are not in touch with their creator.
“Since you’re with the Christian Coalition, I’ll go ahead and put it out there that to me, it’s broken people,” Taylor responded in a video posted by NOWCastSA. “People not being in a relationship with their creator and therefore not being in a good relationship with their families and their communities and not being productive members of society.”
Taylor also listed more policy issues that also contributed to poverty, such as teen pregnancy, lack of education, and economic segregation.
The Huffington Post accused Taylor of “denigrating atheists” in their own write-up while an atheist group called Taylor “intolerant” for her comments and claimed that she singled out atheists.
“In any case, Ivy’s remarks about poverty reflect an astonishing and willful ignorance. Perhaps more important, there is something deliberately cruel and profoundly vicious in Ivy’s attempt to claim the root cause of poverty is people who don’t share her religious superstition, and that those individuals who do not share her religious superstition are somehow ‘broken people’,” Patheos, a secular humanist blog declared.
Taylor said her comments were taken out of context in a Facebook post Sunday.
“I also believe in Original Sin, and that was the context for my comment in the YouTube video clip,” Taylor’s statement read. “We’re all ‘broken,’ from the richest among us to the poorest, until we forge a relationship with our Maker. I could have expressed myself more clearly in explaining my belief at the forum.”
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